One) the school is the focus of many folks idea of authority. It's the first area where they are subjected to authority. From the principals to their teacher and to where they may be subjected to assumed bullying.

Two) the school is almost certainly to be free of any protection from aggression . So the shooter will know his will be the only weapons there. Elementary schools especially, will have a majority of defenseless targets with few adults and thse adults will more likely be female whose qualifications and political associations there are opposite of being a hinderence to him. Thus more targets. Few shooters choose a bar to shoot up: good chance of other weapons and peeps to use them. Few pick police stations. Very few. Few pick court houses though very little to keep a shooter from walkin in there and firing away except that little sign saying guns are restricted. The school has no obsticals in the way

Dave

_________________________
There are 10 kinds of people.Those that understand binary and those that don't.

One thing to keep in mind when discussing all of this: Columbine, Va Tech, Tucson, Aurora, and now CT -- none of the perpetrators of these horrendous shootings were criminals beforehand and they didn't go through some nefarious underworld black market to get their weapons ...

So when the discussion gets to "the criminals will always find a way to get a gun," that's kind of beside the point, because none of these people were criminals and they were able to get their guns in the same way any other law-abiding citizen is able to ...

So maybe the focus shouldn't necessarily be on keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but keeping them out of the hands of otherwise ordinary citizens who have a mental condition or are simply pissed-off at the world ...

That's what I saying today... if we had better rules and regulations, if people were required to take a course on the proper way to clean a gun.. on how to store a gun away from a childs curious hands or a teens angst-ridden moments.. then there would be less opportunity for this crap.These "kids" often get the guns from their parents house or a friends...

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

Actually, the killer had choices of what instrument to use for his carnage.as an example, I live right across the street from a school. Several times a day, classes of twenty some kids walk across the street to the activity area for PE the teacher leads them. If a person was predisposed he could mow them down in a car. There would be nothing to prevent it. All that has kept that from happening is that no one has wanted to do that.

Why has this not happened that we know of. It's that we aren't rob rammed for that. In the us when one considers mass murder, we think guns. Not cars. But cars are a lot more available . It's so easy to get a car illegally. How often do we hear that about guns.

Dave

_________________________
There are 10 kinds of people.Those that understand binary and those that don't.

Yeah... but males lean towards guns. Always has been.I a guy is going to take his own life.. it's often with a gun. not so with females... they do pills and booze or other methods. Guys have always gravitated towards the sudden violent ending.

I know this was a massacre today... but it touches on guns and kids and suicide, since he killed himself.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

Suicide DeathsSuicide takes the lives of about 30,000 each year.On an average day, one person ends their life every 17 minutes.Every 1 hour and 39 minutes an elderly person kills him or herself.Every 2 hours and 12 minutes a teenager/young adult kills him or herself.Overall, it is the11th most common cause of death, more frequent than homicide which ranks 14th.Among young people, it is the 3rd most common cause of death.There are 4.1 male deaths by suicide for each female death.Suicide AttemptsIn an average year there are 734,000 annual attempts (estimated, no annual national data available).For every death by suicide, there are 25 attempts.Among youth, there are 100 to 200 attempts for every death - often used as a cry for help among the young.Among the elderly, there are 4 attempts for every death - the elderly are most often the most lethal in carrying out the attempt.There are 3 female attempts for each male attempt - males are more lethal in killing themselves, i.e., using guns. Nearly 60 percent of all suicides are done with a firearm.5 million living Americans (estimated) have attempted to kill themselves.Each suicide intimately affects at least 6 other people (estimated)

Survivors (Family members and friends of a loved one who died by suicide)

Each suicide intimately affects at least 6 other people (estimated)Based on this estimate, there are approximately 4.5 million American survivors of suicide.Suicide Among the Elderly (for more statistics see Suicide and the Elderly)Suicide rates increase with age and are highest among age 65 and older.Men account for 81 percent of suicides in that age group.Suicide rates are highest for those who are divorced or widowed.Suicide Among the YoungAmong persons age 15 to 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death, behind accident and homicide.Persons under age 25 account for approximately 16 percent of all suicides.People living in a household where a firearm is kept are almost 5 times more likely to die by suicide than people who live in gun-free homes.Suicide is the second leading cause of death for college age youth, as well as for ages 15 to 19 in many states.NHSDA Report / SAMHSA (U.S. Dept of Health) - In 2000, over three million youth seriously considered suicide in the U.S. and of that number over one million attempted suicide. That equates to over 2700 attempts each day by young people between the ages of 12-17. This averages almost 2 attempts each minute.

"If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he’s not the problem."

But not nearly as effective. Think you can mow-down 20 people with a car? Not that easy. With a semi-automatic? Child's play.

The problem I have with today's gun laws is that it makes available to literally everyone perhaps the most legally efficient method of killing as many people as possible in the least amount of time.

The point isn't that, yes, if someone really wants to kill other people they will find a way; the point is why do we as a society feel an obligation to make it so easy to do so?

Gun control in and of itself isn't going to end people killing each other -- heck, it won't even end mass killings such as we've seen today. What it *will* do is make such things more difficult -- in order to get a 100-round clip, you *will* have to go to the underground market and not some mail order catalog -- that's the entire point.

Right now, we're handing out the tools for carnage on a platter. I guess I fail to understand the opposition to making that more difficult.

If you're determined to kill someone, it's easy enough to do if, as Lady Macbeth says, you screw your courage to the sticking place. Death has many routes. The issue is not that there are many ways of killing, but as s-o-o says, the ease with which guns make it possible to kill in great numbers. The "2nd amendment solutions" perspective presupposes that at some point or other "the people" (whatever that means in this context) will be under assault from federal &/or other government forces, and so "the people" can defend themselves from their own government. That's the idea at the heart of constitutional arguments, and everything else, like arming to protect oneself from robbers or whatever, just gets folded into it. By the way, the idea of every citizen armed to protect self from other selves worked out really really well in the old Wild West, didn't it. The idea of arming oneself as a protection against the government may have made sense in the 18th century (I don't concede that point, by the way, since I'm of the school that emphasizes the "well-trained militia" part of the amendment, and a "well-trained militia," in 21st century terms, means something like the National Guard, which is an arm of the government--but forget that for the sake of argument). So how well would that work in a world where the federal government has the largest fleet, air force, and army in the world? It's hard enough to fight city hall in the courts--think about fighting the US armed forces with a rag-tag bunch of self-professed militias. And even if that idea isn't daunting, think about the result--a civil war. That worked out really really well in the 19th century--the bloodiest war in US history. And think what would be happening elsewhere in the world while the US descended into civil war. Oh yeah--arming oneself as a protection against the government makes great sense. Yes indeed.

I'm not against people owning guns. I don't and wouldn't, but if someone else wants to have a gun to shoot deer or skeet or their own feet--more power to them. Or rather, limited fire-power to them. You don't need automatic weapons to do that.

Seven years ago my 39 year old son walked out to the middle of Lake Tannecomo Dam and jumped to his death. In Missouri Four years ago my extremely bright highly academically courted grand nephew put a plastic bag over his head and died in his bed. He was is mothers only child. Well loved by everyone . They had no clue. In Tennessee.

Dave

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There are 10 kinds of people.Those that understand binary and those that don't.

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